The present invention relates to a method of drying a developed, wet sheet carrier and an arrangement for performing the method.
A drying device is disclosed in the German document DE-PS 3,124,688, in which only one radiator pair with the reflectors arranged behind them, and behind it a not shown blower with a fresh air passage are provided. The blowers operate for withdrawing water vapors produced during drying on the one hand. On the other hand the transporting rollers are cooled by the supplied fresh air in idle and therefore a disadvantageous, indefinite pre-drying of the sheet carrier on the rollers during transportation of a new material is prevented. The guiding surfaces extend after the radiators for guiding the sheet carrier, toward subsequent pair of rollers. When one radiator pair in the known drying device is not sufficient for a fast, satisfactory drying of great sheet carrier quantities, it was necessary to provide several radiator pairs each with two blowers and fresh air passages one after the other. Such a construction occupies a lot of space and, due to the great number of blowers and air shafts, is expensive.
German document DE-OS 2,323,725 shows a dryer in which at each side of the guiding path for the sheet carrier a blower is arranged. Each blower supplies the fresh air in a kind of pressure chamber, from which the air is directed to the sheet carrier through individual air sources. Cool fresh air is applied with each air source unto the sheet carrier and provides simultaneously cooling and removal of water vapor produced by the infrared radiation. The drying itself is performed here exclusively by the infrared radiation. For providing all air sources with the respective quantity of cool fresh air, high intensity blowers with high space consumption are required. The feed quantity of the blowers must be adapted to the number of the air sources, or in other words to the number of the infrared radiators.
German document DE-OS 2,153,752 describes a pure convection dryer. In this convection dryer the warmed air is supplied to the sheet carrier.